Health-care-associated bloodstream and urinary tract infections in a network of hospitals in India: a multicentre, hospital-based, prospective surveillance study
Authors: Purva Mathur, Paul Malpiedi, Kamini Walia, Padmini Srikantiah, Sunil Gupta, Ayush Lohiya, Arunaloke Chakrabarti, Pallab Ray, Manisha Biswal, Neelam Taneja, Priscilla Rupali, Veeraraghavan Balaji, Camilla Rodrigues, Vijaya Lakshmi Nag, Vibhor Tak, Vimala Venkatesh, Chiranjay Mukhopadhyay, Vijayshri Deotale, Kanne Padmaja, Chand Wattal, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Tadepalli Karuna, Bijayini Behera, Sanjeev Singh, Reema Nath, Raja Ray, Sujata Baveja, Bashir A Fomda, Khumanthem Sulochana Devi, Padma Das, Neeta Khandelwal, Prachi Verma, Prithwis Bhattacharyya, Rajni Gaind, Lata Kapoor, Neil Gupta, Aditya Sharma, Daniel VanderEnde, Valan Siromany, Kayla Laserson, Randeep Guleria, Rajesh Malhotra, Omika Katoch, Sonal Katyal, Surbhi Khurana, Subodh Kumar, Richa Agrawal, Kapil Dev Soni, Sushma Sagar, Naveet Wig, Pramod Garg, Arti Kapil, Rakesh Lodha, Manoj Sahu, M.C. Misra, Mamta Lamba, Shristi Jain, Hema Paul, Joy Sarojini Michael, Pradeep Kumar Bhatia, Kuldeep Singh, Neeraj Gupta, Daisy Khera, D Himanshu, Sheetal Verma, Prashant Gupta, Mala Kumar, Mohammed Pervez Khan, Sarika Gupta, Vandana Kalwaje Eshwara, Muralidhar Varma, Ruchita Attal, Sukanya Sudhaharan, Neeraj Goel, Saurabh Saigal, Sagar Khadanga, Ayush Gupta, M.A. Thirunarayan, Nandini Sethuraman, Ujjaini Roy, Hirak Jyoti Raj, Desma D'Souza, Mammen Chandy, Sudipta Mukherjee, Manas Kumar Roy, Gaurav Goel, Swagata Tripathy, Satyajeet Misra, Anupam Dey, Tushar Misra, Rashmi Ranjan Das, Gulnaz Bashir, Shaista Nazir, Khuraijam Ranjana Devi, Langpoklakpam Chaoba Singh, Anudita Bhargava, Ujjwala Gaikwad, Geeta Vaghela, Tanvi Sukharamwala, Anil Ch. Phukan, Clarissa Lyngdoh, Rushika Saksena, Rajeev Sharma, Anoop Velayudhan
Journal: The Lancet Global Health (2022)

BackgroundHealth-care-associated infections (HAIs) cause significant morbidity and mortality globally, including in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Networks of hospitals implementing standardised HAI surveillance can provide valuable data on HAI burden, and identify and monitor HAI prevention gaps. Hospitals in many LMICs use HAI case definitions developed for higher-resourced settings, which require human resources and laboratory and imaging tests that are often not available.MethodsA network of 26 tertiary-level hospitals in India was created to implement HAI surveillance and prevention activities. Existing HAI case definitions were modified to facilitate standardised, resource-appropriate surveillance across hospitals. Hospitals identified health-care-associated bloodstream infections and urinary tract infections (UTIs) and reported clinical and microbiological data to the network for analysis.Findings26 network hospitals reported 2622 health-care-associated bloodstream infections and 737 health-care-associated UTIs from 89 intensive care units (ICUs) between May 1, 2017, and Oct 31, 2018. Central line-associated bloodstream infection rates were highest in neonatal ICUs (>20 per 1000 central line days). Catheter-associated UTI rates were highest in paediatric medical ICUs (4·5 per 1000 urinary catheter days). Klebsiella spp (24·8%) were the most frequent organism in bloodstream infections and Candida spp (29·4%) in UTIs. Carbapenem resistance was common in Gram-negative infections, occurring in 72% of bloodstream infections and 76% of UTIs caused by Klebsiella spp, 77% of bloodstream infections and 76% of UTIs caused by Acinetobacter spp, and 64% of bloodstream infections and 72% of UTIs caused by Pseudomonas spp.InterpretationThe first standardised HAI surveillance network in India has succeeded in implementing locally adapted and context-appropriate protocols consistently across hospitals and has been able to identify a large number of HAIs. Network data show high HAI and antimicrobial resistance rates in tertiary hospitals, showing the importance of implementing multimodal HAI prevention and antimicrobial resistance containment strategies.FundingUS Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cooperative agreement with All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.TranslationFor the Hindi translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section.